Ilona Andrews - Wildfire

“Out!” Heart barked, and took two steps back.

I shoved the full magazine at him and took his spot.

The creatures kept coming, scuttling over the corpses. The two massive .50 cal guns mounted on top of the carriers came to life and spat thunder and death, chewing through the advancing horde.

More beasts poured out of the gates: smaller yellow creatures that looked like skinny cats with wolf heads; bloodred raptor-like things moving fast on two thick legs; a six-legged horror sheathed in glistening thin tentacles that writhed like earthworms, its top half erect as if it were some nightmarish version of a centaur . . . They came and came and came. Time lost all meaning. Only two things mattered—shooting and calling, “Out!”

The space between the carriers and monsters shrank. Barely thirty feet separated us now.

I unloaded the last of my magazine into a tentacled monstrosity. “Out!” I stepped back, ejected the old magazine . . .

I grabbed the new one from the runner, slid it into the weapon . . .

A huge blue cat that looked just like Cornelius’ Zeus lunged onto the top of the carrier and charged us. Heart fired, point-blank, his rifle spitting a stream of bullets. The cat snarled and rammed the armored plate. It bent. It shoved its massive paws through the window, trying to rake at Heart with its claws.

I threw myself against the armored plate, thrust the rifle through the window, pointing it almost straight up, and sank a stream of bullets into the cat’s throat. Blood splashed on me. The great beast collapsed, the light fading out of its beautiful eyes.

“Out!” Heart and I yelled at the same time.

No runner came. I pulled a spare magazine out of my pocket. Heart did the same.

Creatures piled on top of the carrier, snarling, screeching, clawing, slipping in the blood. We fired point-blank.

A woman screamed on the right.

A tentacle whipped through the window and wrapped around Heart’s arm. He jerked a knife out and hacked it in half.

Last magazine. We were overrun.

Magic moved behind me like a tsunami. The armored carrier under me slid. I grabbed on to the armored plate. The two massive vehicles slid to different sides like the two halves of a door opening wide.

I turned. Rogan stood inside one of the most complicated circles I’d ever seen. It glowed white.

The animal horde abandoned the carriers, streamed toward him, and crashed against the boundary of the circle. Rogan had drawn a high-level spell. The amount of magic he’d fed into the circle was so high, its outer boundary no longer existed in our world.

The green tarp covering the cargo of the truck flew aside. Three long metal cylinders lay in the back of the truck, each thirty feet long and twice as wide as a telephone pole. Rogan raised his arms in a classic mage pose, palms up, elbows bent. The cylinders shot straight up and spun in place. Dozens of blades slid out of the metal shafts. The cylinders turned sideways, forming a triangle, two on the bottom, one on top, rolled over each other and cut into the beasts. Severed limbs flew.

The grinder.

The blades swept through the horde, mincing flesh. Blood drenched the pavement, pooling in puddles under the heaps of cut-up bodies. The air smelled like blood and ozone.

Someone retched. I couldn’t even vomit. I just stared at it, mute. The slaughter was so bright, so vivid, there was no defense against it.

The flood of creatures stopped. In the back, in front of the gate, a knot of magic formed thirty feet above the ground. Black, shot through with violent lightning, it churned, growing larger and larger. Something strained within it, stretching at its boundaries from within.

The blades mopped up the last of the beasts and hovered near it, waiting.

Magic pulsed. The invisible blast wave hit me in the chest. My heart skipped a beat. For a torturous second my lungs locked up. I staggered back and managed to draw a hoarse breath in.

The darkness tore. A colossal foot landed on the pavement, thick toes splayed wide. The armored carrier shook.

Another foot, thick purple-red, its texture rough. Thick claws, each the size of a car, dug into the pavement.

My mind refused to accept that something that large could be alive.

A giant beast landed in front of the gates. It stood on all fours, its legs spread wide like those of a charging Komodo dragon. Thick horn spikes studded its purplish hide and united into bone plates on its shoulders. Its head resembled that of a snapping turtle, but a forest of teeth filled its mouth. Angry white eyes stared at us.

The blades moved toward it and ground against the beast’s side. A grinding noise lanced my ears.

The beast swatted at the blades, knocking them aside. The cylinder flew, spinning. The gargantuan creature raised its front left leg and stomped toward us.

Boom. The carrier shook.

Boom. Another step.

The blades scraped along its sides and dove under its stomach. No effect. The beast opened its mouth and bellowed, an unearthly lingering sound. The sonic blast hit us. If it wasn’t for the helmet, I would’ve clamped my hands over my ears.

Boom.

We had no cover. The armored carrier wouldn’t hold it. If the creature stomped on it, the vehicle would be a metal pancake. The wall was behind us. Everything else around us was gore.

“Fire at will!” Heart’s precise voice snapped in my helmet. “Everything you have. Light it up.”

Boom.

“Belay that,” Rogan’s voice said in my helmet.

One of the bladed cylinders fell to the ground. The other two rose, spinning so fast, the blades became a blur. The cylinders streaked to the beast and punctured its eyes, drilling their way into its skull.

The creature screamed.

In the circle, Rogan’s whole body shook as if he were trying to lift a great weight. The light of the circle faded, its power exhausted.

The blades burrowed deeper.

Rogan snarled.

The blades sank in all the way and disappeared into the creature’s skull.

Not enough. It was still moving. It was still—

The colossus trembled. Its head pitched back. It staggered forward and collapsed. The pavement cracked under its weight, breaking in big chunks, like ice on a frozen lake.

I let out a breath. My legs gave and I sat down on the platform.

Heart crouched by me and patted my shoulder. “You did good.”

I realized something wet was on my cheek and touched it. A tear, tinted with alien creatures’ blood.

“Look at it,” I whispered. “It’s awful. So much death. Why?”

“House warfare,” Heart said, and patted my shoulder again.

I took off my helmet. Someone handed me a wet washcloth and I cleaned the blood off my face. Rivera appeared next to me, as if by magic, and I gave him back the rifle. The battle was over.

I pulled out my cell phone with shaking bloody fingers. There were two messages from Catalina and Arabella, demanding to know what was going on, one from Grandma Frida asking if I was feeling okay, and a smiley face from Bern.

I dialed Mom.

The phone rang.

She picked it up.

“Mom?”

“We’re okay. Are you okay?”

I almost cried. “Yes.”

“Good.” She hung up.

Rogan walked out of the circle. His face was haggard. He walked like his whole body was sore. He was looking at me. I walked toward him. We met halfway among the gore. He hugged me to him, tight, hard, and kissed my hair.

We walked together to the gates. Rogan’s people formed around us. We entered the dark building. There was nothing there. It was basically a cavernous hangar, reinforced steel walls and a concrete floor, empty except for the stench of ozone and signs of many animals crammed into a small space: clumps of alien fur, a few torn-off tentacles, and puddles of urine. We crossed it to a door on the far left, walked through a short hallway with the same concrete floor and reinforced walls, and through another door.